FNA results are in... now what!?

"Follicular neoplasm". Both nodules they biopsied. (1.3cm and another 1.1) and both came back as that.

The dr. was VERY comfortable leaving it alone for 6 months and having me come back in for an ultrasound. He is about "90% certain" that these are adeomas...and not cancer. He didn't even bring up surgery, other than in 6 months if on ultrasound it is larger, then he'd probably want it removed.

He didn't mess around at all, and did say "can I be 110% sure they are nothing"?..."no". But I'd put you in that 90% or more range that these are simple adeoma's and nothing more.

He gave me all the statistics about the vast majority of thyroid cancers are papillary...and how on the type I have, there's no way to tell malignancy unless you take the ENTIRE nodule. But again, he was very sure of himself that these are just adeomas

If you are paranoid why don't you see a great ENT surgery that does a lot of thyroid surgeries and get that opinion. It's good to get the opinion of someone who takes these out, they can give an opinion based upon their experience too.

Well that not so pleasant. All I ever do is look up stuff, and ignore anything that isn't peer reviewed. Looking just a bit you find this, a study of what happens you you examine follicular neoplasms for real (after surgery). 700 some patients.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1422491/

It has this in the conclusions: "The extremely low rate (2%) of invasive follicular cancers among all follicular neoplasms"

I think that backs up what your doctor told you. Your results don't rule out cancer but puts you in fairly low risk category. I look at my results and they say, risk of false negative is 3%. Considering you start out with a risk of 10%, that's not much of an improvement. 10% down to 3% chance it's cancer. Weeee!

The downside would be follicular thyroid cancer which has a 5 year survival rate of 100%, at stage I and II. So I think your doctor thinks along the lines of, it's likely nothing and she's not die because we waited 6 months, so wait and see. Because taking out someones thyroid for nothing is bad too.

I think your doctor is doing the right thing. And you can always ask for a second opinion. Agree it's hard not to worry.

#2...He's only having me wait 6 months. If he said, "hey come back in a year or two"...then I'd think this dr. is a quack and I'd be for sure looking for a second opinion!

I will most likely have it taken out at the 6 month checkup, regardless. I am not good with the "unknown". I do great (obviously) with good news, and I can even somewhat handle bad news. But I can't deal with living in limbo. And the thought of cancer *maybe* growing in me somewhere, is enough to drive me insane. I can tell you my quality of life the next 6 months is going to be horrible. I will function and keep up with life....but my carefree attitude is now gone.

I hope these "follicular adneomas" are as common as my dr. says. Because when I have BOTH nodules come back as that, I gotta just take his word for it and try and relax. I guess on the bright side, there is more than one. Not just some single huge lump in my neck. I have quite a few, (all small) and from all these statistics...thats better than just one large one.